Connected things Hardware & making 2012
Zeebo
Hacking habits instead of APIs at the Health Hack Day
With Arduino Adafruit MP3 player shield motion detector
A concept for a not-so-connected object — a soft toy dog that helps you live longer and healthier.
We worked from a premise published in The Lancet in 2011: walking more than 15 minutes a day, or 90 minutes a week, extends your life by three years.
Brilliant. How do you make that happen for people uninterested in gadgets, activity tracking, digital achievements and graphs? Getting a dog can get you out of the house more — but then you have the responsibility, the feeding, the insurance, the…
Hm. How about a toy dog that keeps track of your walks, looked after by the children of a household? He sits in the hallway and calls for attention by wagging his tail if you haven’t taken him out today. After a walk he goes back to his spot — but tomorrow he’ll encourage you a little further if you didn’t quite get your 15 minutes in. That’s it. No app, no API.
This was an AW&SOME project with a few simple goals:
- Hack habits rather than APIs
- Share responsibility rather than data
- Encourage rather than compete
- Track time, not effort
Zeebo is a mostly functional prototype, built with an Arduino, Adafruit’s MP3 player shield, a motion detector, and some other bits and bobs — in the 24 hours of Health Hack Day Stockholm 2012. The jury presentation is on YouTube.
